My smell wipes across the thought of him. Crying in a pin stripe business suit. There was an accident. Perfect bodies lose perfection like melting ice. Crowns of thorns are passed out, metal trinkets to place in private. Kiss the blood rolling down. The bus cannot pull away. The circus is canceled, a cancer spreads on a house not so big, not so white with snipers on top, death inside vulture gloves. A golden crown on our leader, putrid in thought, his expensive soul, made, no blessing. Thinks he's King George carrying only half a lung, long dead, a stopped heart. He doesn’t dance. He snuffs out the dancers. A child's broken legs carried by his father swing slightly. A dusty place he doesn’t visit. Might scuff those shoes. Get dust in strange hair. His dry fingers of so much discussion never wave at me, the boy. I put my body into the fence outside his house. I watch the homemade signs like familiar birds. I'm still bleeding.
Sarah Lilius | I am the author of four chapbooks including the two most recent, GIRL (dancing girl press. 2017), and Thirsty Bones (Blood Pudding Press, 2017). Some of my publication credits include Drunk Monkeys, the Denver Quarterly, Bluestem, Tinderbox, Stirring, Luna Luna Magazine, Entropy, and Flapperhouse. In 2016, I was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. I live in Arlington, VA with my husband and two sons. My website is sarahlilius.com.
the patterns do not change __ __ __ __
they are misremembered __ __ __ __
cool hand __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
separate heat __ __ __ __ __ __
Be gentle don’t bump it I’ve got Andromeda centered
In the viewfinder but it will already have shifted slightly
Gliding its trillion stars and their moons in millimeters
Behind the local legends painted ancient on the dome
but ask me again how much
I care about the other mouths
that could call my name.
We’d get home, and he’d go back to weaseling money out of Mom
and squandering it on things that were smokable or fit in a syringe,
on what wasn’t bread. The little money he made came from
selling our family’s things: Mom’s jewelry, TV and VCR
swallows actin’ drunk
swimmin’ overhead
chasin’ each other ‘round
like brand new lovers
stumblin’ out the bar at 2 am
I command subjects, turn math to English, history
to lunch, govern teachers and students alike in
my slow crawl through middle and high school
periods.
We are all God’s little playthings. Or else why are we on a ball.
I had the goods,
the lowdown, the skinny,
the whole truth
and nothing but.
I was dangerously
in the know.
If you listen, really listen, their voices come back.
They start to tell you about places you’ve
never been, about things you want with
a ferocity that scares you sometimes. They make
sense. Sit with them on the couch and watch
a movie you know is bad.
Only connect
indeed. Dressed and buckled in
like chefs or psychiatric patients,
they shuffle and lunge.